Recipe: Easy Halloween Cupcakes

When I was planning out what Halloween bakes I wanted to feature a surprise center spiderweb cupcake. I had a picture of them in my head and baked them a good four times. The cupcakes themself turned out brilliantly and even the surprise center worked out well. It was just the decoration. I couldn't get the buttercream to work, it was splodgy and hard to work with. And even when I managed to get the buttercream to work, the spiderweb design was an absolute disaster so I gave up on that and turned my hands to an easy and quick cupcake recipe that you could whip up in 20 minutes and still have time for a cuppa.

These cupcakes are very simple but they're great for a quick sugar fix and are even better as a recipe to make with the kids. For the decorations I went with Nightmare Before Christmas themed rice paper wafers, because it's my favourite film ever and didn't cost the earth. I got these off of Amazon and there were plenty of other Halloween designs to choose from if Nightmare Before Christmas isn't your thing.

Ingredients
- 110g Butter/Stork (softened)
- 110g Caster Sugar
- 110g Plain Flour
- 2 Tsp Baking Powder
- 2 Medium Eggs (beaten)
- 3 Tsp Cocoa Powder
- 2 Tsp Orange Extract
- 1 Sachet of Dr Oetker Ready To Use Easy Chocolate Icing
- Rice Paper Wafer Decorations

Method

1. Pre heat your oven to 180C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases. I used Halloween themed ones from Lakeland.
2. Place the softened butter and sugar into a bowl. Using a stand mixer, hand mixer or silicone spatula, beat together until pale and fluffy. I used a silicone spatula as that's all I had to hand and would recommend a spatula over a wooden spoon as it gives a better results and requires less work. 
3. Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into the bowl. 
4. Beat the eggs if you haven't beat them already and add to the mixture. 
5. Add your flavouring of choice. I went for orange but you could try something else such as coconut, salted caramel or coffee. 
6. Beat together until the mix is well combined, making sure to scrape the edges of the bowl. It's another reason I prefer using a spatula to beat everything together. You can just swipe it along the sides of the bowl and it combines everything together seamlessly. 
7. Once mixed, spoon into your cases and place in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Keep an eye on them, especially towards the end as you don't want the cakes to dry out, a problem I've found when using cocoa powder in my recipes. 
8. Once cooked, leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 
9. For the icing I used a sachet of Dr Oetker Ready To Use Icing. You could easily do buttercream to ice these but I was feeling lazy so chose this sachet instead. Following the instructions on the back of the sachet, I placed a dollop of icing in the middle of each cupcake. I tried spreading this to cover the entire top but it wasn't the best at spreading, so I kept it to the middle so the rice paper wafers would have something to stick to.
10. Once you're happy with your icing/buttercream decorate with your rice paper wafers or halloween themed decorations of choice. Leave to set, then enjoy.